A Flesh Wound
by FlutteringLights
Summary: While out on a mission, Lance steps on something owie. The team removes said owie, with quite a bit of difficulty, a lot of arguing, and no shortage of complaining from the patient. Who would have thought a little cactus could do this much damage?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hi, everyone! So, I'm super new to Voltron, but the characters are _so_ cute, I couldn't resist writing a little fic.

Summary: While out on a mission, Lance steps on something owie. The team removes said owie, with quite a bit of difficulty, a lot of arguing, and no shortage of complaining from the patient. Who would have thought a little cactus could do this much damage?

Warnings: None, really, unless you're, like, RIDICULOUSLY squeamish about needles. A little language because of who I am as a person.

The paladins were tired. All five of them, bone-weary and exhausted. They'd been walking through the mud on this desolate, windy, _cold_ planet for hours, and so far had seen no sign of their target.

"I can't believe Princess Allura has us walking through this wasteland just to find a stupid rock," Lance complained. While he was likely voicing what everyone else was thinking and he knew it, the whine was still met with a synchronized group eye-roll.

"It's not a _rock_ ," Keith argued, not for the first time since their search began. "It's a powerful, ancient… something."

"Powerful, ancient rock," Hunk chimed in. That was the great thing about Hunk, Lance thought with a smile. Always willing to find a middle ground. No wonder the Yellow Lion chose him.

Keith grumbled something under his breath, but didn't argue further, so Lance chalked it up as a half-victory. Lance was always more cheerful on these sorts of missions, even if he was tired, too. He might voice his complaints more, even sometimes verging on whiney, but overall, he was a lot less grumpy than Keith or Pidge, at least. The "old man duo," as he liked to refer to them in his mind, became curt and sometimes downright mean when they were tired and hangry. Lance just used jokes.

However, his still somewhat jovial mood was interrupted when he took a wrong step, tired eyes not really looking down at where he was going, and felt a white-hot, searing pain in his ankle. Immediately and instinctively collapsing backward to take his weight off it, he cried out in surprise.

"What happened?" Shiro was suddenly right by his side, kneeling next to him.

"Ow," was all Lance could manage. He was trying his best not to show how much it had really hurt. When he pried open his eyes to look at his ankle, the nature of the injury surprised him. He'd not sprained or broken it like he'd anticipated, but had simply stepped on a cactus-like plant. Just Lance's luck, he'd gotten probably the only angle that could have possibly allowed for several of the long barbs on the plant's surface to pierce through the gap in his armor that allowed his ankle joint to move.

"Gross," Pidge remarked, "that looks bad." The plant itself was a deep green, nearly black, and the spines that protruded off it were long and purple, with white, shiny tips.

"It really got you good," Shiro commented, gingerly poking at one of the spines and not flinching when it caused Lance to wince in increased pain. "They're in deep." From what Lance could tell, there were only three spines… six? No, no; definitely three… Nine? His vision was doing strange things. He closed his eyes once more.

"Well, get them _out_ ," he bit. His voice was tense and pained, and though he was trying to hide it, since the injury really didn't look like much in his opinion, god _damn_ did it burn.

"I need you to stop moving, first," Shiro told him. Lance hadn't even realized that he'd been squirming until Hunk's large, warm hands were pressed against his shoulders to steady him. He felt another set of hands on his leg, holding it still, and he weighed his reluctance to open his eyes against his curiosity to see who was touching him.

He decided to just assume it was Keith, based on how mercilessly he was pushing. As Shiro pulled tentatively on one of the spines, Lance bit down on a cry of pain. He was sweating, he realized, even though he wasn't exerting any physical energy.

"Stop, Shiro," Pidge instructed from behind him. So it _was_ Keith's hands on his calf. Bastard. "There are barbs on the other side, too, facing the other way. Look at this one, right up close." Of course, while the procedure was occurring, Pidge was examining the freaking plant.

"Lance?" Pidge began, and he grunted affirmatively to let her know he was listening. He didn't want to open his eyes-he was tired. "Hey, so removing these suckers is going to be more difficult than we might have thought," she explained. "There's little spines going the other way on each barb, to prevent you from pulling them out, like a bee's stinger."

"As much as I appreciate the botany lesson," Lance interrupted impatiently, "I don't care how you get them out, just do it. They burn."

"It burns?" Hunk repeated. "Should we be worried about that?" he asked, softer this time, to Pidge.

"Get his armor off," Shiro instructed, "Just the left leg. It'll give us a better angle." Lance felt Keith's hands begin to pull the armour away from his lower leg, then his foot, leaving only the under armour. He shivered with his foot now exposed to the elements.

"Uh… Pidge?" Shiro called, "What now?"

"The way you get a bee stinger out is to scratch at it," she supplied, but it didn't seem like that would work with these. They were much thicker and longer than a bee's stinger. "Uh… I guess you're just going to have to pull it."

"Sorry, Lance," Shiro said, and before Lance could even ask him what he was apologizing for, he felt pain ripping through his ankle. He let out a surprised, pained yelp.

" _Jesus_ , Shiro!" Lance shouted, "Can you- _GAH!_ " He was cut off from his complaint as another needle was pulled mercilessly from his muscle. " _Son of a-FFFFFFFFUUUUUU-!"_

Shiro patted the kid's knee gently. "All done," he promised, his tone sounding sympathetic but slightly amused. Lance opened his eyes to see a small, neat pile of three barbs on the ground. They were tinged with his blood-so was his whole ankle, now that he looked at it. And it was still gushing. Shiro pressed tightly down on the wound for a moment, earning another pained hiss from Lance, who was at this point too exhausted to really do anything more than that.

"Sorry, buddy," Shiro apologized, "but I've got to stop the bleeding. Just a few seconds of pressure should be enough. You're doing great." Lance didn't reply-he was focusing on trying to steady the feeling that he was rocking back and forth. Based on the fact that he could still feel Hunk's secure grip on his shoulders, he could tell that he wasn't, but an overwhelming vertigo made him feel as if he were sailing.

"You okay?" Hunk asked, but Lance didn't quite trust the looming nausea in his gut to stay calm if he spoke, so he opted for nodding instead. Hunk's hold on him tightened. Lance felt a cloth mop the sweat from his forehead and neck, gently tracing his jaw bone and removing the dripping perspiration. Pidge, he realized, would have the only free set of hands for this task, but he was a bit surprised by her tenderness, if he was being honest.

Shiro let Lance's leg go, but after a few seconds, clamped down on the wound once more with his hands, tighter this time.

"It's not closing," he explained.

Keith scoffed. "Even your _blood_ is annoying and stubborn." Lance smirked a bit.

"Cuban blood is tenacious, what can I say," he shot back. However, despite the joke, he was still fighting with the pain quite a bit. Everything in him wanted him to sleep, and the wound seemed a siren, lulling the rocking boat of his thready consciousness closer to certain demise.

"Stay awake, Lance," Shiro commanded. He was using his _dad_ voice, and Lance didn't have a choice but to obey. "Why's he so tired?" he asked Pidge.

"Dunno," she responded. "We've been walking all day," she suggested, "Maybe this is just the final straw."

That explanation didn't feel right to Lance, nor did the fact that he could still feel the stinging, burning ache of the needles in his ankle with every heartbeat. It had gotten more intense the longer they'd remained in his body without removal, and now the pain was starting to dissipate, but not really losing intensity-just spreading. The migration was inky, and the way the pain traveled through him was almost liquid. It reminded him of what happened when he poured cream into black coffee, how the white would spread its little tendrils out over the darkness before it claimed the whole mug in a milky cloud.

Shiro released his leg once more, checking to ensure that the bleeding had stopped before deciding he was happy with the result.

"It's just a trickle, now," he informed. "Should stop on its own." He released Lance's leg and began putting the armor back on. While he was sure Lance would protest, in as much pain as he was clearly in, Shiro was surprised to find that Lance seemed to be trying very hard to grit his teeth against it and not show his discomfort. Shiro smiled a bit. Lance was a tough kid.

Still, despite that, the black paladin did feel guilty for hurting him, and put the armor in place as gently as he could.

"That should help stabilize your ankle," he explained once the leg piece was back in place.

Lance opened his eyes a crack and smiled.

"Thanks, everyone," he said. His voice was weaker than he would have liked, but the others didn't seem to notice.

"We'll rest for a bit, have lunch," Shiro instructed, "Then see if you're in any condition to walk."

"I can walk," Lance protested, shuffling with intentions to show them all, but found that his muscles were not cooperating. He briefly wondered if this was truly just exhaustion, or if that weird goddamn space cactus had done something stupid to his muscles. Some kind of temporary paralytic or something. It would be just his luck.

"No," Shiro argued in a tone that suggested that he would have the final word on this issue. "I know you _can_ , but you shouldn't. Not yet. Give yourself half an hour to recover, huh? It's lunch time, anyway."

"Did Allura send us with those weird energy bars?" Lance turned his nose up in anticipated disgust.

"You bet she did," Pidge replied with fake enthusiasm.

Lance's nausea made itself known again. "I think I'll pass," he said.

"You should eat," Hunk argued, pointing an energy bar toward the blue paladin, but Lance turned away from the offering.

"Later," he promised. "I, uh, want to give my stomach a little time to settle." Worry took up residence in Hunk's features, but he didn't say anything. He'd give it half an hour, he told himself, then reassess how his best friend was doing. Lance turned onto his side, facing away from the group.

"I'm just going to take a little cat nap," he explained, exhaustion clinging thickly to his words.

"Wait," someone protested. "You should drink water before you sleep. You were sweating a lot." Lance opened his eyes a crack to find that it was Keith who held out a bottle of water toward him. "You're still sweating," Keith observed.

Lance took the water bottle without a word, gulped down a few mouthfuls, and handed it back.

"Come on, more than that," Keith persisted, but Lance was already asleep.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Should be one more chapter, however, I'm really bad about updating. I'm awesome at starting fanfic and leaving them to die. Reviews help my motivation, though! I'm _totally_ not fishing for compliments. I would never. The nerve of you to insinuate such a thing.


	2. Chapter 2

After half an hour of resting and eating, Shiro knew that they didn't have any more time to waste. Princess Allura would have their heads if they didn't get the mission done before the sun set.

"Who wants to wake Sleeping Beauty?" he asked, and the other paladins blanched. Shockingly, there were no volunteers. Shiro sighed. "I'll do it."

"Careful, Shiro," PIdge warned.

"Keep your hands away from its mouth," Hunk added. Shiro rolled his eyes and kneeled next to the blue paladin.

"Lance? Hey, buddy; it's time to wake up," Shiro said gently. He shook Lance's shoulder, and the younger man started to come around. He groaned with the effort of opening his eyes and sitting up.

"How's the ankle?" Shiro asked. Lance tested it for a moment, wiggling his toes, pointing and flexing his foot and finding that it only protested weakly.

"It's okay," Lance finally decided. "I can walk." Shiro smiled.

"Good. If you're ready, we should get going." As Lance tried to stand, he found that while his foot didn't hurt so much anymore, the rest of his body had a bone-deep ache, one seemed to coat every tendril of muscle in a burning acid. He bit back on a groan, but it had already half escaped, and Hunk was at his side, helping him stand.

"Take it easy," Hunk cooed, "Slowly." Lance grimaced and shook him off.

"I'm fine," he protested. Hunk looked hurt, and Lance felt guilty. "Thank you," he added more gently.

Hunk was uneasy. While yes, they were all exhausted, Lance's energy levels seemed to have undergone a drastic dip since stepping on the cactus thing. One moment, he was joking and poking fun with the others, and now he seemed to barely be able to keep his eyes open. It worried him. Hunk brought up the rear, committed to staying right behind Lance in case he stumbled or, god forbid, stepped on another strange forest plant.

Sure enough, Lance was stumbling. Not badly, never enough to make him completely lose his balance. Just a little bit here and there, but noticeable, if you were paying attention. Sadly, however, Hunk was the only one who seemed to be paying attention.

"You okay, buddy?" Hunk asked after a particularly dangerous tilt to one side that nearly left Lance flat on his face in the mud.

"Yeah," Lance replied with a slightly forced grin. "Just a killer headache," he added under his breath. Hunk wasn't even sure he was supposed to hear that last part, but he had, and it tightened the knot in his stomach a bit more. It even got Shiro's attention.

"You should drink some more," he recommended, holding a water bottle out for Lance to grab. The boy took several large gulps before handing it back to Shiro, smiling an unspoken gratitude.

"Do you need to stop and rest again?" Hunk asked. Lance shook his head.

"Let's just finish and get back to the castle, okay?" Shiro nodded, and began leading the way once more.

Lance was sweating profusely, but his body felt cold. Shivering, he wrapped his arms tightly around himself, wishing with all his might that they could just finish the mission soon and that he could go home.

Well, not _home_. It wasn't home, and while he loved his friends, he was not ready to give Allura's castle such a title. Home was his mother and his siblings; home was his tiny room that he shared with his brothers; home was the smell of Cuban cooking and the sound of his sister playing guitar in her room when she couldn't sleep and the muffled sounds of his brothers roughhousing upstairs. It was a place where everything you owned would be borrowed and broken, where everything you wore would be old and too big, and where it was never your night to choose what game you played or what movie you watched. Home was never quiet, even when he wanted it to be; home was never private, even when he wanted it to be; home was far, far away from here. He wasn't ready to call the castle home, not yet.

He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he wondered whether he would _ever_ be able to call this place home. It would certainly be a long time before he went back to his family. He'd hoped to find something of a surrogate in the paladins, but so far, they seemed to argue like siblings but care for one another like strangers. Family needed the bad times and the good.

Suddenly, Lance saw something moving in the bushes on the other side of the path. It jerked him out of his thoughts, and he startled. It was a Galra soldier, with a gun aimed directly at-

"Keith!" Lance cried out, lunging and knocking him over just as the shot rang out.

"What the hell, Lance?!" Keith choked out, recovering from having the wind knocked out of him by their sudden tumble to the ground.

"Guys, get down!" Lance shouted. He wanted to grab his bayard, to shoot the Galra soldier before it could hurt anyone, but his arms didn't seem to want to cooperate, and his vision was blurring.

"Lance?" Shiro tried. "Lance, what's going on?" Hunk and Pidge had walked over to where Lance was staring intently, his eyes locked forward in an expression of pure fear. They didn't seem to find anything, but how could they miss him? He was standing right there, for God's sake!

"The Galra soldier," Lance breathed.

"You think you saw Galra?" Pidge asked.

"I know what I saw," Lance slurred defensively. "He shot at Keith." The group exchanged worried glances. Keith was still pinned beneath Lance, but now that the commotion had died down, he could feel the heat radiating off the blue paladin in waves.

"Lance? You okay?" His tone was slightly patronizing, but Lance didn't seem to notice. His eyes were still staring, albeit unfocusedly, ahead, at the same part of the brush.

"There's nothing there, bud," Hunk promised. Lance's head was spinning. He'd been there; of course he'd been there, but now that he'd blinked a few times, there was nothing but fuzzy, empty forest and grainy black spots.

Keith propped himself up on his elbows, allowing his face to inch closer to Lance's, and, having no free hands, bowed his head forward to touch Lance's forehead with his own. Lance closed his eyes to the contact.

"He's boiling," Keith informed the group, who was staring at them with worried glances.

"We've got to get him back to the castle," Shiro decided. He bent down next to Lance.

"Can you hear me, kiddo?' he asked. Lance nodded sluggishly. "Great. You've got to get off Keith now, alright? We're going back to the castle."

"Did we find the rock already?" Lance asked blearily. Keith almost laughed out loud.

"Sure," he agreed halfheartedly, "You found the rock and saved the day; you're the once and future king." It seemed like that might have been too many words for Lance to process, because his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"What?"

"Don't worry about it," Shiro reassured, swatting Keith on the back of the head lightly in reprimand. "I'm going to help you up, alright?" Shiro pulled Lance up and steadied him when he swayed. Lance's feet would not cooperate.

"Allura," Pidge called into her comm, "We need a wormhole. Lance isn't doing so hot."

"What?" Allura cried, sounding astonished but calm, "What happened?" While Pidge explained the situation and described the plant so that Coran could start on an antidote for whatever poison was coursing through Lance's veins, Shiro and Keith half-carried, half-dragged him back toward the Lions.

Keith wasn't too terribly worried until Lance started whimpering. That wasn't something he expected, nor was it something he knew how to handle. He looked to Shiro for guidance.

"What hurts, Lance?" Shiro asked gently. Lance's eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

"My head," he grunted, "My eyes." Shiro's grip tightened on the boy.

"Can you open them for me for a minute?" he asked. Lance hesitated, but finally managed to open his eyes for only a second before slamming them shut once more. However, it was more than enough time for Shiro and Keith to see that both irises were almost entirely black. His pupils were dilated extremely, painfully, allowing the sunlight from the forest to pour in and surely causing him agonizing pain.

Keith reacted instinctively, reaching over and cupping Lance's eyes with his hand to shield them from the sun.

"We'll be at my Lion soon," Shiro promised. "You'll be fine."

Sorry the ending got rushed. Thanks for reading and commenting!


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